but, what about the fear of the underclass not producing enough slaves? it's amazing when you look at the history of homophobia. a consistent narrative jumps out:
1) in the early days, it was often used as a 'gotcha' type thing by the church. so, if you're a philosopher that's talking about all kinds of crazy things like atheism, and you happen to be gay, they could get you on that when they can't get you otherwise. it was often used as a pretext to shut down opposition.
2) during various phases when the empire was weak, it was attacked because it was viewed as hindering population replacement. so, if there was a famine or a plague or a disastrous war, they'd go after the gays for not doing their job in helping to produce more workers and soldiers.
3) under feudalism and slavery, it was attacked because it hindered the ability for the serf or slave's owner to produce further offspring (which would produce more wealth, or be sold).
4) then bondage became replaced by debt, but the prohibition continued for the same reason.
oddly, now that population control (rather than population replacement) is the dominant goal of the elite, the oppression has mostly slowed down, except religious opposition - which is the same basic idea as we've seen throughout history: gay people don't create a new generation of donating church goers.
well, and also in russia. where the population is declining.
"whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
i'll take the latter, up to the caveat that the classical conception of a god was not an omnipotent, monolithic force but a being with faults and strengths.
i very well may cite this, in the future, as an argument for my continued claims of not belonging to
your species.
the millenial generation has, to this point, failed to generate any kind of novel art form at all. for all the talk of entrepreneurialism, they actually seem to be piss fucking poor at innovation.
i actually think that this idea of entrepreneurialism in gen y is just a projection. it's what neo-liberalism imagines ought to be true, so it therefore is true. i mean, it's right out of atlas shrugged or something. if the media says it's true, it's true. they create reality. right?
for whatever reason, they seem to be solely interested in retro, and that includes in the spectrum of electronic music. it's 2017, and they primarily want to listen to fucking folk music.
it's not reflective of a longlasting dystopia, either: the younger kids are really leap-frogging them. no, they are.
i don't know exactly what it is. but i feel like i was born at exactly the wrong time. twenty years earlier or twenty years later and i'd have avoided being stuck on what is truly an awful cusp.
this is meant to have an underlying snottiness to it.
i downgraded from 24 to 3.5, which is "html video compliant", but it's apparently not compatible with the right kind of container. 3.5 is 2009. 24 is 2013. so, there's still some potential that i can find the oldest version, and that it's just on the cusp of what is workable.
if not, i'm going to need to find a new browser for my tv.....
--
hi.
i'm running a 500 MHz processor (it's a
pentium III) with one gb of RAM as a tv receiver. i know this is an old
computer (1999.), but it worked perfectly fine for this purpose before
the html5 rollout came down, and i'm not interested in upgrading it. i
mean, what else am i going to do with a PIII besides put it in a
landfill? and, that's a poor answer that should leave google hanging
it's head in shame. so, i want this to work, somehow - and google should
want this to work somehow, too. otherwise, that unnecessary waste is on
their conscience. the machine is fine, it's just old. there's no good
reason to discard it.
the trick to getting the machine to
work for this purpose up to now has been to use software designed for
it's life-cycle, which specifically meant holding to a very old version
of firefox from the mid 00s and a very old version of flash from the
same period (i don't care about security on this machine, and it never
leaves youtube, anyways). the html5 pushdown has forced me to upgrade to
a version of firefox that is simply too resource heavy to run on this
machine. so, now what?
well, i suspect that having
stable access to video streams at 144p would help a lot, but i seem to
be unable to access streams from my primary streaming source (which is
the us state department) at lower than 360p. that was ok when i could
run an older version of firefox, but it's just too much, now. why is
youtube forcing me to stream at a quality level that is too high for my
machine to handle? why can i not make that decision myself?
if
that's impossible, the next step is to try to switch browsers. chrome
is obviously not going to work. does anybody have any suggestions
regarding html5 compliant browsers that are efficient enough to run on a
500 MHz processor?
lastly, i'm considering
moving from xp to a very minimal linux distro. this is what these
distros are designed for, after all. but, i'm a little apprehensive
about whether it's worth the time or not (obviously, there's only one
way to find out...). is anybody willing to put down an educated guess as
to whether this would actually get around the problem or not?
mar 15, 2014
i know they're indignant over an act of barbarism, but why aren't these protest movements seizing factories and farms instead of getting beat up by riot cops in downtown parks?
Michael IV 1 year ago
That would be the best option if their aim was to start a civil war but it isn't. They simply want to be heard by their government, not create a new one on their own.
jessica 1 year ago (edited)
+Michael Martel yeah, there's this impossible problem we've created by not educating our citizens. as a result of living in almost total historical ignorance, they grow up thinking ridiculous ideas, like that there's some kind of culture of democracy in the western world. this leads them into protest movements that demand change from this inane, supernatural force they call 'government' - rather than realizing that government is they themselves, and their inaction (a function of their terrible education) is a function of the system's planned failure.
a better education would teach them that the class war is perpetual. the civil war is not determined by dates and events, but is always carried out between those who own capital and those who do not. there is consequently no solution other than to attack those who own property, and redistribute it to the people.
yet, so long as we are kept ignorant, we will gather in squares and chant slogans instead.
Abayarde718 1 year ago
+deathtokoalas Yo bro you're the fucking man. That was brilliant. If we gathered to grow public gardens and make abundance the norm it would be 10000X more effective than shouting words in anger. If we grew food and cannabis, our own medicines, to become independent of the need for so much capital and consuming, we could crash the economy. People Dont want real change. They want nanny states. Peave to u.
jessica 1 year ago (edited)
+Abayarde718 i think it's worse than that, actually. they seem to legitimately want things to change (or, in the case of turkey and many other places, perhaps not change), but they're fundamentally incapable of carrying out that change, which is by design. a big part of the problem is that we're taught all kinds of lies about how our governments represent us, rather than the truth, which is that they represent the interests of capital (banks and big corporations, still mostly resource and extraction based at this high a political level). this leads us to the delusional (religious, really) belief system underlying these demonstrations - prayers to the state will be heeded if they are loud enough and targeted enough. that's less a desire for a nanny state, and more blowback from social engineering.
in truth, demonstrators are doing precisely what they're taught to do, and being beaten up by a demonstration of state force like they're supposed to be. cries of "human rights violations!" exist in some parallel universe, full of rainbow unicorns prancing through fields of money trees. you've all confused the state for an entity that actually gives a fuck.
the handful of examples of large scale successful demonstrations have not been peaceful. in actual fact, gandhi was demonstrating to the british authorities the size of a potential army (and the hopelessness of their position, tactically). it was the threat of force that won him his aims (which were full of far more fail than win). likewise, the civil rights protests would have been entirely useless if the demonstrators weren't armed (they don't teach us that). in order for "non-violent protest" to be effective, it must come with the threat of imminent violence. that is to say that, when effective, it is not truly non-violent at all, but merely a more enlightened type of violence.
but, it's the government's desire to keep us ignorant and stupid that is both at the core of these protest movements and the reason they offer no hope for the future. the reason they sit in squares and sing songs isn't that they don't want to improve their own lives, it's that they don't know how to. they only know how to ask their state deity to solve problems for them - just as they're supposed to.
these protests are consequently the exact opposite of a hopeful youth movement. rather, they are evidence of the impending doom that we face as a consequence of not educating our young people.
"you mean, you shouldn't put gatorade on the crops?"
Michael IV 1 year ago
+deathtokoalas The people will always be ignorant, there's is a slow change. It's the leaders that are the ones who can bring true change and quickly. Therefore people should study for themselves and learn for themselves and then lead their people. Instead of teaching the whole populace, which seems quite impossible.
jessica 1 year ago
+Michael Martel ach, no. no gods, no masters. smashing the state is the only possible way to bring back history....this just isn't the way to do it.
leaders never represent people. they always represent capital. putting hope into leadership is only possible through not understanding the inherently exploitative nature of capitalism.
Michael IV 1 year ago
+deathtokoalas There will always be leaders in this world, that's an inevitability. There are those who follow and those who lead. The only chose we have is who are the ones to lead.
jessica 1 year ago
+Michael Martel see, michael is terribly brainwashed. he thinks there are only those who follow and those who lead. that allows him to internally validate an authoritarian system as irreplaceable in one form or another. it may convince him, one day, to pick up a gun to protect a flag, rather than attack those who handed him the gun.
leaders are those who follow from the front. the quality that defines a good leader is an ability to understand the tendencies in the herd, then repeat it back in a way that justifies their use of power. there is consequently no real difference between a leader and a follower, except where they exist in the hierarchy. if we are to be reduced to only leaders and followers, we're destined to stumble around in circles. only the blind may lead, and only the deaf may follow.
there is, however, a difference between those who engage and those who do not. rather than thinking in terms of this silly leader/follower distinction, it would rather behoove you to conceive of situations in a philosopher/actor sort of distinction. actors are leaders and followers - people who take part in the group. philosophers are those who sit back and watch the leaders follow themselves around in circles. from this point of abstraction, they are able to conceive of problems in the way people behave.
it's not that we need more philosophers. we have plenty. it's that we need to start listening to them.
Michael IV 1 year ago
+deathtokoalas We've had plenty of Scientific revolutions and extreme changes in knowledge over the years. We've all listened to plenty of philosophers and learned from them, but much of the world is deaf to sense and reason. That is why we still have wars, that is why we still have strife, because the populace fails to listen. Like Sun Tzu said, deception simply has a bad connotation. If the deaf populace is led by an enlightened leader, then there is no need to fight the redundant battle of trying to convince everyone of "the right way to think". Only one person has to understand everything, and that is the leader.
jessica 1 year ago
+Michael Martel you're deifying your government leaders; the concept you seek is called "god", and the system you envision is called "fundamentalism". it's the kind of thing that exists in iran, and that once existed in rome. there are three reasons why these systems fail. the first is that human wisdom is not only finite but bounded much lower than our imagination would like. we're dumb apes. the second is that power corrupts; there is no enlightened sage that will reform a corrupt system, it is the system itself that needs to be abolished. removing bush did not end targeted assassination programs. removing yanukovich will not end endemic ukrainian corruption. removing erdogan will not dismantle the turkish military-industrial complex. the third is that society is collaborative by definition and must function through consent to be stable. hierarchical, authoritarian societies are constantly in rearrangement, perpetually on the brink of implosion and collapse. it's these shifting class divisions, and desires to maintain power within them, that are the reason we continue to fight. there is no way to abolish conflict (this, again, is delusional religious thinking), but only a way to abolish want, making conflict difficult on an organized scale. so long as leaders may raise armies, they may start wars.
i don't wish to write off the masses. i am a member of these masses. i stand with them. rather, i point out that we are losing the fight against the leaders that wish to enslave us by reducing us to ignorant fools that are dependent upon them for survival. this is a created condition, not an endemic one.
i don't wish to continue this discussion.
Cristian Sosa 1 year ago
+deathtokoalas I wish people could start to seize government buildings around the world, and rise in an utopian anarchism. But sadly mankind is eons behind to be ready to leave in peace without the need of a government. And a change of politics in the government, say from Capitalism to Socialism for instance, would be like placing a band aid on a major laceration. We are broken, and fixing our entire society must be one of the hardest things humanity has yet to face.
jessica 1 year ago (edited)
+Cristian Sosa i'm not really in agreement with the idea that we're centuries away from actual freedom. if there's a temporal component, it's in the technology and i actually think that automated production has the potential to revolutionize the mode of production within our lifetime, and the social system will have no choice but to adjust to that extreme economic reorganization.
but, if it's true, the end point can only be accomplished by failing dozens or hundreds of times. there's no teleology in history - not marx' teleology of historical materialism, nor hegel's end of history, nor the dreaded orthogenesis that came out of trying to reconcile darwin with genesis. we will not get to an end point as a function of time, we need to push our way there. and there may be a few messes along the way...
yeah.
i think it's becoming clearer and clearer that this is the time for the left to finally abandon the democrats for good. they have nothing to build on. and the basis of the opposition that they seem to want to build - support for obamacare, attacks against russia - is really appalling.
i think it's time to really put the knife in, and turn - to get really violent in the criticism. to walk away and let them die in the street....
it's time to move on in building a third party. they're done.
dec 14, 2013
it's curious how this manages to whitewash the reality that santa claus is not actually based on "st. nicholas" but is a merging of pagan mythology with colonialism. in the reformation era northern european legends, the "gifts" that "santa" brings are made by "elves" that happen to be black and under the colonial domination of the european nation that receives the gifts. the santa claus story, itself, is a rationalization of white supremacist ideology. it follows that santa is indeed as white as adolf hitler was.
"US intelligence officials told the Washington Post and NBC
that the classified document, said to be over 50 pages long, says
intercepted communications revealed Russian intelligence officials
celebrating Trump’s win."
that's exactly the same trick they used to avoid their responsibility to provide evidence linking 9/11 to al qaeda.
i can link you to articles where netanyahu celebrates trump's win. does that prove they were in on it, too?
but, listen: they throw specious arguments like this out there because they know that this is how most humans form thoughts. this is more than enough for most people; it's actually more effective than logic.
it's not news, of course. it's long been obvious that biden is a ham-fisted dunce.
science has always been and will always remain a threat to authoritarianism.
joe, listen...
i'm going to presume that you've never taken a physics course before, have you? didn't think so.
when you take a physics course, you don't quietly sit there and accept the authority of the professor. that's not how science works, joe.
rather, the professor takes it upon his or herself to demonstrate the argument using a series of mathematical deductions. and, at every step of the way the professor - if it is a good professor - will invite you to challenge and question the results being developed.
further, a physics course will have something called a lab component where the student will actually do the experiments. this is fundamental, because science does not operate on authority but on the ability of the scientist to discover results on their own.
his comments actually give a lot away about what he thinks, and it's not very flattering to his intelligence.
see, when i look at this "evidence", i'm left to conclude that it couldn't possibly be the russians, because they wouldn't make errors like this. the cyrillic thing is especially obvious.
if it was the russians, they would have covered their tracks far better than this.
rather, what this "evidence" tells me is that somebody set the situation up to blame it on the russians - and didn't try very hard, either. probably because they knew they were creating a media mirage, and weren't intending it to stand up to scrutiny. we're supposed to obey.
so, who are the real suspects if you rule out the russians? who could do this the way it's been done?
outside of the cia, the only really serious possibility is mossad. and, would the cia cover for mossad? this is a stretch. it's obscure, in my opinion, but not impossible. i think it's obvious that netanyahu would prefer the republicans over the democrats.
the null hypothesis has to remain that it was cia. that's occam's razor. that's the simplest, most obvious explanation. you can gather evidence for or against this, from there.
but, if this is what you're presenting? i would take it as evidence that somebody wants you to think it's the russians, rather than that it's actually the russians. and that would all but rule the russians out.
i'm not going to accept an argument from authority. and i'm not going to take your word for it.
do you have evidence? will you present it? if so, i will analyze it.
otherwise, i'd request that you shut the fuck up and stop wasting my time - until you're willing to provide some hard facts for me to look over and make a choice for myself.
of course, i know better. even if they had the evidence, they wouldn't release it - because they don't want people to approach the situation this way. they want people to listen and obey.
this is their story, though. and they're sticking to it. however flimsy it is.
i'll tell you what: i'll believe what you say on russia when you release your dossier proving bin laden took those towers down. you told us that dossier was coming, any day now, over fifteen years ago. you launched multiple wars based on the contents of that dossier. but you never released it.
you just told us it was "clear" who was behind the attacks.
i agree that it's clear, actually.
i just don't agree with your claim of responsibility.
“could it be any more clear that Russia was behind what happened in the election?” they asked.
that is a classic gloss-over tactic.
"clearly," says the talking head "this false statement is true."
when pressed for details, there invariably aren't any. that is why the term "clearly" was invoked.
mathematicians are experts at this tactic.
"clearly, the axiom of choice is correct."
(psst. pro-tip. they're blaming the russians for what they did themselves.)
no, i don't want to "collab".
i'm very explicit: the vlog is a journal. there will never be another person in it. it's only about one thing, and that one thing is me.